About Me

Sloan Elle Garner (she/her) is a production dramaturg and director with experience in devising, musical theatre, and adaptation. Her dramaturgical practice relies on offering tangible and relational experiences to casts, crews, and audiences to deepen relationships to texts and narratives. She is the Southeast Regional Vice President of Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and an alumnae of Alpha Psi Omega.

She graduated from Mississippi School of the Arts with discipline focuses in theatre and music before earning her B.A. in Theatre from the University of Southern Mississippi, where she minored in Applied Music - Bassoon, graduated from the Honors College summa cum laude, and published her thesis entitled “Three Forms of Death in David Rabe’s The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Sticks and Bones.” She then obtained her M.A. in Theatre with a focus in dramaturgy from Villanova University, where she was a Thomas and Tracey Gravina Endowed Scholar. Sloan is currently a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Georgia, where she has served as Dramaturgy Mentor and Instructor of Record for Dramaturgy and Voices of Diversity in American Theatre and Drama. Previously, she has worked as Program Coordinator of the Theatre and Dance Departments at Eastern University, Dramaturg in Residence at Evergreen Theatre Collective, and Theatre Instructor at Grenada High School.

Sloan’s research specialty is in Southeastern identity, and her projected dissertation will be using archival work to string together the first ever narrative of Atlanta theatre history in the New South, 1866-1953. Recent projects include: Sunday in the Park with George (dramaturg, Villanova Theatre), Move (music director), Built by Fire (director), The Sondheim Special (director, Next Act), Little Shop of Horrors (dramaturg, UGA Theatre), Grease (intimacy choreographer, Next Act), and John Proctor Is the Villain (director, UGA Theatre). She frequently presents at the annual conferences for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, American Society for Theatre Research, Mid-America Theatre Conference, and Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas. Sloan's upcoming work includes direction of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown for Next Act, and intimacy choreography for Mad Scientists in Love at Town & Gown Players.

With the moniker “Southern Directurg,” Sloan is passionate about uplifting communities in the rural Southeastern U.S. and Southern Appalachia through education, community resources, empathy, and art.